Facilitating the highly bonded cohort: Should more be done to anticipate and reduce the potential for hyper-cohesiveness and deindividuation in therapy training cohorts in universities?

Abstract

Successfully facilitating learning for small therapy training programmes requires a special understanding of the psychological work of group processes. Students in therapy training spend almost every class together over two or more years. In these student groups, or cohorts, individuals manage themselves within a unique interpersonal and intragroup dynamic. Course instructors must develop their capacity to work effectively with this specific learning milieu. At the same time, the particular dynamics of the cohort context might not be understood by university management where increasingly few cohort contexts exist for students. Consequently, phenomena arising from the specialised nature of the group environment may not be well understood outside of the expertise of the course. In the first part of the paper, the international literature about learning in cohorts is reviewed. In the second part, this reflection is further developed to explore facilitation of a group that has some features of what might be described as negative cohesiveness, or what is described in family theory as enmeshment. Some consideration as to how to anticipate and off-set potential difficulties for groups in therapy training courses is also contributed.

Facilitar exitosamente el proceso de aprendizaje en los programas de formación de terapeutas, requiere una especial comprensión del trabajo psicológico en los procesos de grupo. Los estudiantes en formación están juntos en casi todas las clases durante dos o más años; en estos grupos de estudiantes o cohortes, los individuos se manejan dentro de una dinámica única personal e intra-grupal. Los profesores del curso deben desarrollar su capacidad para trabajar en este ambiente específico de aprendizaje. Al mismo tiempo, la dinámica particular del contexto del cohorte, podría no ser comprendida en el ambiente universitario en el cual este contexto existe cada día menos; como consecuencia, puede ser que no se comprendan los fenómenos que se derivan de la naturaleza especial del ambiente de grupo fuera de la pericia del curso. En la primera parte de este artículo se revisa la literatura internacional acerca del proceso de aprendizaje en grupos. En la segunda parte, esta reflexión se desarrolla aún más para explorar la facilitación de un grupo cuyas características se pueden describir como cohesión negativa, o según la terapia de familia, como enredo. Se expresan igualmente algunas consideraciones acerca de cómo anticipar y disolver dificultades potenciales en los grupos de formación de terapeutas.

Faciliter avec succès l’apprentissage au sein des petits programmes de formation thérapeutique nécessite une compréhension particulière du travail psychologique à l’œuvre dans les processus groupaux. Les étudiants en formation thérapeutique passent presque tout leur temps scolaire ensemble pendant deux années ou plus. Dans ces groupes d’étudiants, ou cohortes, les individus sont aux prises avec une dynamique interpersonnelle et intragroupe uniques. Les enseignants doivent développer leur capacité à travailler de manière effective au sein d’un tel environnement. Dans le même temps, la dynamique particulière au contexte de la cohorte risque de n’être pas comprise par l’équipe de direction universitaire du fait de la réduction des contextes de cohorte pour les étudiants. Par conséquent, les phénomènes émanant de la nature spécialisée de l’environnement d’un tel groupe risquent d’être mal compris en dehors de l’expertise de la formation. Dans la première partie de cet article, la littérature internationale sur les cohortes et l’apprentissage est passée en revue. La réflexion est approfondie dans la deuxième partie et porte sur l’animation de groupe présentant des traits que l’on pourrait dire de ‘cohésion négative’, ou comme on le décrit dans la théorie de la famille d’’emmêlement’. L’auteur propose de considérer comment anticiper et compenser les difficultés potentielles au sein des groupes en formation thérapeutique.

Keywords:

• therapy training
• psychotherapy training difficulties
• therapist trainee difficulties
• cohort dynamics

Palabras clave:

• formación terapéutica
• dificultades en la formación terapéutica
• dificultades de los estudiantes de psicoterapia
• dinámica de los cohortes

Mots-clés:

• formation thérapeutique
• difficultés en formation de psychothérapie
• les difficultés thérapeute en formation
• dynamiques des cohortes

Acknowledegments

Thanks are due to Dr Christine Cross of the Kemmy Business School at the University of Limerick for drawing the author’s attention to the organisational psychology literature on cohort dynamics. Thanks also to Dr Alison Ledger at the Leeds Institute for Medical Education, University of Leeds who read through an early draft of the paper and made some useful suggestions.

Notes

1. Though more broadly psychotherapy and counselling training is indicated to have ‘attracted little attention’ with predominant emphasis on ‘idealised training programmes’ (Lowndes & Hanley, 2010, p. 164).

2. It is also acknowledged that the constructs underpinning the uses of the term cohesiveness have been criticised as underdeveloped and vague (Hornsey, Dwyer, & Oie, 2007).

3. In one cohort, students requested a change to the submission date for final written work. I explained that the particular date was a departmental requirement beyond my control. I indicated that past cohorts had managed the due date, relieved to be able to finish their written work and prepare the final case presentation. Without letting me know that they were unhappy with my response, the students raised it with management who in turn raised it with me at an unrelated meeting. As other issues of course resourcing were being progressed with management around that same time, I was worried that this student concern might be conflated with other, more complex, issues. I had to work quite hard in preparation for class to acknowledge that the students could have had no idea of the wider issues, including their potential instrumentalisation, but only of their own feelings of having too much work to complete in too short a space of time.

4. I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers of this paper for the suggestion to explore Nemeth’s empirical studies of this phenomenon.